Hazardous Work in the Toy Department of Journalism

My first professional reporting assignment was covering a high school basketball game in Lincoln, Neb. As a college boy working only one night a week, I had handled in-house duties my first year on the job, but midway through my second year the sports editor sent me to the Lincoln Northeast-Omaha Central tilt (that’s the way sportswriters talk) with this encouraging send-off: “Don’t screw it up.”

My adrenaline flowed from the opening tip, but I worked to keep my cool because after the game a deadline story awaited. By the final buzzer I was so cool as to be cocky, until discovering to my horror that the final tally in my score book didn’t match the scoreboard. Only a fellow journalist can appreciate the wave of nausea that ensued.

Quick aside to non-journalists: Of the journalistic sins you can commit when covering a sporting event and live to tell about, getting the score wrong is not one of them.

Naturally, they turned off the gymnasium scoreboard almost immediately, and in my panic I had neglected to write down the correct score. Everyone was filing out of the gym, leaving only me and the janitors who are mopping large pools of sweat that I am depositing on the floor.

No big deal now, but picture yourself being 19 years old, working your first game and having to walk up to someone and say, “Uh, excuse me, but what score did you come up with for the game?”

That tale was relegated long ago to the trash heap of history, but the trauma probably rerouted me from sportswriting over to the news side.

What a fortuitous career moment that turned out to be. I wouldn’t have had the courage to keep covering sports.

We used to call sports the Toy Department. Phooey. I mean, what does Arthur “The Scud Stud” Kent have on today’s sportswriters?

The latest incident involved a New York Mets pitcher spraying bleach last month on some writers as they interviewed another player. This was the same guy, Bret Saberhagen, who three weeks earlier tossed a firecracker under a table near writers, saying, “It was a practical joke. If the reporters can’t take it, forget them.”

Earlier this season, TV news showed a Kansas City-area reporter with a bloody face after he was nicked by a piece of equipment hurled around the room by the enraged Kansas City manager. It seems that the manager was upset by some of the questioning.

They told us in journalism school that we’d encounter trouble on the job, but they never mentioned head wounds.

What is it with these ballplayers?

I’ve seen lots of angry legislators, mayors, city councilmen and police chiefs, but I’ve never seen one spray bleach on a reporter.

I just can’t picture Supervisor Harriett Wieder setting off firecrackers in press row in the Board of Supervisors chambers.

Could Supervisor Gaddi Vasquez get so mad that he’d dump a bucketful of ice water on someone, as ballplayer Deion Sanders did last year to announcer Tim McCarver?

Would Sheriff Brad Gates send a dead rat in a gift-wrapped box to a reporter, as baseball player Dave Kingman did some years ago to a female sportswriter?

How about the former Angels pitcher, thought by many to be a fun-loving guy, who for a gag called a female sportswriter in her motel room on a road trip at 3:30 a.m., then again at 3:45 and 4 o’clock. He didn’t call to talk; just to wake her up.

That was the same guy who, after spitting water on her shoes on another occasion, was told by the reporter she’d bill the team for it. His response was to turn his back, lift the towel around his waist and emit an obnoxious sound.

I’m here to say that no city manager in Orange County would do that.

I admire my sportswriter brethren because they seldom complain publicly about treatment like that, unless it gets real serious. The truth is, some writers put up with a lot of crap in the course of doing their jobs. They personally couldn’t care less what pitch the opposing batter hit out of the park, but they ask the pitcher after the game because sports fans care and want to read about it the next morning.

The current behavior would disillusion me toward ballplayers, if that hadn’t happened long ago.

My awakening came in 1974 in St. Louis. A press pass gave me walking-around privileges, and I used it to poke my head in the Cardinals’ locker room. Although in my mid-20s, I was still a wide-eyed kid when it came to baseball players. These were the tradition-rich Cardinals, the descendants of the fabled Gas House Gang of Dizzy Dean, Country Slaughter, Ducky Medwick.

But as I poked my head in, a sight loomed that has stuck in my memory like a bloody knife: a row of ballplayers standing side-by-side in front of a lengthy mirror, all blow-drying their hair.

Arrgh. Let’s face it, I would have made a lousy sportswriter.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.